Donald Trump has tapped Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as his Attorney General, according to multiple media reports. Sessions, an early Trump supporter, appeared to be a lock for a high-profile gig in the incoming Trump administration. On Thursday the president-elect’s transition team issued a statement extolling his successes. “While nothing has been finalized and he is still talking with others as he forms his cabinet, the president-elect has been unbelievably impressed with Senator Sessions and his phenomenal record as Alabama’s attorney general and U.S. attorney,” the statement said. “It is no wonder the people of Alabama re-elected him without opposition.”

Although Republicans control the Senate 52-48, Sessions may still face a difficult confirmation hearing. Thirty years ago, Sessions was denied a federal judgeship over allegations that he made racist comments while serving as a U.S. attorney in Alabama. Sessions, who eventually withdrew himself from consideration, was accused at the time of calling a black colleague “boy” and warning him to be careful what he said to “white folks.” He also allegedly joked that his only qualm with the Ku Klux Klan was its members’ drug use and called the A.C.L.U. and N.A.A.C.P. “un-American” for attempting to “force civil rights down the throats of people who were trying to put problems behind them,” CNN and The Huffington Post report. During a Senate Judiciary hearing in 1986, Sessions denied the accusations, asserting, “I am not a racist, I am not insensitive to blacks. I have supported civil rights activity in my state. I have done my job with integrity, equality, and fairness for all,” but the allegations ultimately cost him the judgeship.

“Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past,” the late Senator Teddy Kennedy said at the time. “It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge.”

The Alabama lawmaker has also come under fire for wrongfully prosecuting black civil rights activists for voter fraud, for his support of Trump’s campaign suggestion to institute a Muslim ban, and for his opposition to the 14th Amendment, which grants people born in the United States automatic citizenship. "I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen," Sessions said of the amendment in 2010.